328 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 



Jefferies' books. There are styles which are noticeable 

 for their very lucidity and naturalness ; Jefferies' is not 

 noticeable even to this extent. There are styles more 

 majestic, more persuasive, more bewildering, but none 

 which so rapidly convinces the reader of its source in the 

 heart of one of the sincerest of men. Sometimes it is 

 slipshod — in sound often so, for he had not a fine ear. 

 It comes right, as a rule, by force of true vision and 

 sincerity. On a moving subject, and amidst friends, he 

 would speak much as he wrote. He did not make great 

 phrases, and hardly any single sentence would prove him 

 a master. He could argue, describe visible things and 

 states of mind ; he could be intimate, persuasive, and 

 picturesque. No one quoted so rarely as he. He drew 

 many sides of indoor and outdoor rustic life, human and 

 animal, moving and at rest, and in his words these things 

 retain their pure rusticity. Later, the neighbourhood of 

 London made him dwell more sensuously than before on 

 the natural beauty which contrasted with the town. 

 Later still, the sensuous was merged and mingled with 

 the spiritual, and the effect was more and more poetic — 

 it might be said religious ; and his style expanded to aid 

 these larger purposes, thus being able in turn to depict 

 Nature from the points of view of the countryman, of 

 the sensuous painter, of the poet of humanity. So, too, 

 with human life. Whether he touched it lightly and 

 pictorially, as in ' Round about a Great Estate,' or with 

 love and fire, as in ' The Dewy Morn,' or with minute 

 reconstruction of acts, thoughts, conversation, and en- 

 vironment, as in ' Amaryllis,' he was equal to the different 

 demands upon his words. Though he had read much, it 

 was without having played the sedulous ape that he 

 found himself in the great tradition, an honourable 

 descendant of masters, the disciple of none, and himself 

 secure of descendants ; for he allied himself to Nature, 

 and still plays his part in her office of granting health, and 

 hearty pleasure, and consolation, and the delights of the 

 senses and of the spirit, to men. 



